{"id":3563,"date":"2016-07-04T17:29:39","date_gmt":"2016-07-04T17:29:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fixmyinfo.com\/?p=3563"},"modified":"2016-07-04T17:29:39","modified_gmt":"2016-07-04T17:29:39","slug":"beacons-going-affect-search-marketing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fixmyinfo.com\/beacons-going-affect-search-marketing\/","title":{"rendered":"How are beacons going to affect search marketing?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beacons and proximity marketing<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/h1>\n

I was intrigued by this article because personally, I did not see that this technology had any long term value – my thoughts were that this was a very temporary solution to a problem that most people did not recognize as a problem.<\/p>\n

But.<\/p>\n

I installed a beacon here several months ago. And a few times a week, I’m almost surprised at the silly little test coupon, or call to action that I attached to it when it pops up. Pleasantly so – it just works.<\/p>\n

Yes, it’s simple – and yes, it does require a user to be interacting with their smart phone. But yes – this can serve a purpose – both for consumers who may get access to a deal they were not aware of, but to merchants who suddenly have access to some pretty powerful data.<\/p>\n

So – read the article, and I would love to hear your own experience with beacons and local business listings…<\/p>\n

By\u00a0Christopher Ratcliff<\/a><\/p>\n

(I actually work for a company that makes beacons and management software<\/a>, so it\u2019s not just me being boring).<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve found little\u00a0doubt that it will bring some very fundamental changes to the way we reach customers, and the type of targeting and data management we\u2019ll need to master in order to do things properly.<\/p>\n

Although perhaps not in the way you might think\u2026<\/p>\n

\"edgelands<\/p>\n

Improving proximity results<\/h2>\n

Search Engine Watch has spoken about beacons<\/a> a lot in the past, but just in case you need a refresher, a beacon is a tiny device that can transmit a signal to any Bluetooth device in range \u2013 phones, fitness bracelets, headphones, smartwatches etc.<\/p>\n

Usually this happens through an app (although Google in particular are taking steps to remove this friction and enable direct device communication), and before the privacy police wade in, it\u2019s all completely opt-in.<\/p>\n

It certainly has some obvious ramifications for local search.<\/p>\n

\"beacon\"<\/p>\n

In the past, we\u2019ve largely been limited to areas defined by map coordinates for localisation. These are fine for locating buildings, but not so hot once people actually enter a space.<\/p>\n

Beacons have a big advantage here because they get that location down to an area a couple of metres across, and they allow you to transmit and receive data in realtime. If I\u2019m standing by the apples in your supermarket, you can fire me a coupon.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m using that example on purpose by the way, and I\u2019ll explain why in a moment.<\/p>\n

Beacons don\u2019t need to be interruptive<\/h2>\n

For marketers, there seems to be an assumption that beacons are an interruptive marketing tool.<\/p>\n

Retail couponing is the most obvious use-case after all, but just as early ecommerce sites learned, couponing is no way to build a successful business. And as the publishing industry is learning, interruptive marketing\u2026 just isn\u2019t very good really. People don\u2019t like it in most cases.<\/p>\n

As I say though, this is only an assumption. The real value of beacons is actually almost the complete opposite of interruptive.<\/p>\n

It is in contextual interactions, which usually rely on either an active request from a user, or passive scanning and data aggregation by the person deploying the beacons.<\/p>\n

In other words, if I visit a museum, download it\u2019s app and enable push notifications while I\u2019m there, then I\u2019m actively searching for information abut my location.<\/p>\n

If not, then I can still be monitored as an anonymous device that is moving around the museum. Once this data is collected, there is a lot of potential value. Maybe it\u2019s time to move that Rodin statue to a more prominent position (possibly next to the gift shop).<\/p>\n

Search will need to become hyper-relevant in an open beacon marketplace<\/h2>\n

So what does this mean for search?<\/p>\n

Currently, a lot of local search isn\u2019t that great. There are plenty of fine examples, but there is certainly an adoption curve, particularly for small businesses.<\/p>\n

Do a quick search for something like \u2018Bike shop, Shrewsbury\u2019 and you can usually see which businesses have a lot of low-hanging SEO fruit that they just aren\u2019t optimising for.<\/p>\n

This is a missed chance, but it is usually being missed because of a lack of familiarity and time. People who are busy running a hardware store don\u2019t often have time or money to really concentrate on good SEO<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As beacon deployment becomes more widespread (and it is going to be), this situation is going to change for the user on the ground. App networks and beacons deployed as general infrastructure in more locations mean that local optimisation is opened up to more players, with more resources. Why should our local bike store be wasting time optimising when Raleigh can be doing it for them?<\/p>\n

Local SEO will begin to be a wider concern not for the locations themselves, but for the companies that sell through those locations. And those companies have the resources and processes available to start doing a really good job.<\/p>\n

There is however, still a place for the location itself in all this, and that is in adding contextual value, which may not come from purely commercial campaigns.<\/p>\n

Recently I visited Edgelands at the Barbican in London<\/a>, where one of our clients has deployed beacons that guide visitors around the interesting (and slightly confusing) internal space.<\/p>\n

[youtube https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=gPEjJ8dm9nU?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]<\/p>\n

The interesting thing here is that it occurs through sound, so that visitors are able to view their surroundings, rather than keeping their eyes glued to their phone screens. It adds context while keeping the visitor engaged with the physical space, rather than having the two vie for attention.<\/p>\n

With the rise of experience stores, this is going to become a more important point of differentiation over the next few years. Customers won\u2019t want distracting alerts and pop-ups, they\u2019ll want something that provides a richer experience.<\/p>\n

From the marketing side, providing these will become a way to deepen brand affinity as much as increase immediate sales.<\/p>\n

Search is about to leave its silos behind<\/h2>\n

This makes location a strange, mixed bag for search. On one side, brands providing advertising through app networks and beacon fleets owned by third parties (in my opinion, telcos are currently best placed to handle and benefit from large scale deployment, as they already have large data networks and physical locations).<\/p>\n

In many cases, this will be about hyper-localised PPC campaigns. On the other, locations providing realtime SEO, with a shifting set of keywords based on whatever is currently happening in-store (or in-museum, or in-restaurant for instance).<\/p>\n

It means that we\u2019ll have to get better at aligning our data and working out which signals really matter, and we\u2019re going to need to get insanely good at management and targeting.<\/p>\n

I hate to use this word, but search will need to become more holistic, and even more aligned with marketing. There\u2019s a huge opportunity here for search marketers, customer experience, data management and more.<\/p>\n

How are beacons going to affect search marketing?<\/a> How are beacons going to affect search marketing? SEW {$excerpt:n} <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beacons and proximity marketing\u00a0 I was intrigued by this article because personally, I did not see that this technology had any long term value – my thoughts were that this was a very temporary solution to a problem that most people did not recognize as a problem. But. I installed a beacon here several months … Read moreHow are beacons going to affect search marketing?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3564,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[28,150],"tags":[151,152,33],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fixmyinfo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-09-at-20.02.35-1.png","yoast_head":"\nHow are beacons going to affect search marketing? beacons -<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"local search, listings, seo, online marketing, fix listing, add listing, nap, google local, yahoo local, find business\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fixmyinfo.com\/beacons-going-affect-search-marketing\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How are beacons going to affect search marketing? 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